Immigration-Cost Claim Splits GOP

A conservative think tank estimated Monday that granting citizenship to 11 million people in the U.S. illegally would cost taxpayers trillions of dollars, a conclusion that split the Republican Party and added a new level of complexity to efforts in the Senate to overhaul immigration laws.

The analysis from the Heritage Foundation concluded that the net cost would be at least $6.3 trillion in inflation-adjusted terms as immigrants gaining legal status would receive $9.4 trillion in government benefits and services over their lifetimes while paying $3.1 trillion in taxes.

The Senate bill would "take a really bad, broken system and make it much more expensive and much worse from the taxpayer's perspective," said Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at Heritage and the report's lead author. In contrast, he said, the more-limited benefits illegal immigrants now receive carry a tab of about $1 trillion over their lifetimes.

"It's a big deal," said Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, a Republican skeptic of immigration changes. "It's a dramatic finding that clearly makes it more difficult for the sponsors to win support."

In contrast, former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, also a Republican, called it a "political document" that "is designed to try to scare conservative Republicans into thinking the cost here is going to be so gigantic that you can't possibly be for it." He and other supporters of the Senate bill believe it would boost economic growth and help cut the deficit over the long haul.

The rift among Republicans, and the broader debate over the immigration proposal, is sure to persist this week as the Senate Judiciary Committee begins considering the legislation, which was crafted by a bipartisan group of eight senators.

Heritage, which is skeptical of an immigration overhaul, released a similar report in 2007 that many in the GOP believe helped derail an effort to rewrite immigration laws at the time.

A push to overhaul the immigration system would cost U.S. taxpayers at least $6.3 trillion according to a Heritage Foundation report. Plus, what's stopping the U.S. from getting involved in the Syria conflict? Photo: Associated Press.

The Heritage report tallied the fiscal impact of changes to immigration law, according to a summary, but didn't assess the impact of any macroeconomic benefits, also known as "dynamic" scoring, which Republicans have long preferred. That approach would assess changes to worker and employer behavior, and to the broader economy, that could result from new immigration laws.

"By ignoring that the economy will be a lot bigger and more productive as a result of immigration, they massively undercounted the benefits of immigration reform," said Alex Nowrasteh, immigration policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio) also disagreed with the study: "Immigration creates wealth—it's not that it's a cost. It's clear over time that it's new energy that creates jobs and wealth and businesses."

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which will calculate the bill's official cost if it survives a committee vote, said last week that it would include a supplemental study gauging the economic impact. When the CBO did that for a failed immigration push during the Bush administration, it found the bill could have helped reduce the deficit by as much as $160 billion over 10 years. A separate CBO analysis that didn't take into account all economic benefits concluded an unsuccessful bill would have added $18 billion to the deficit over a decade.

The CBO usually limits its estimate of a bill's costs to a decade. But with major legislation, such as the immigration proposal, it can offer longer estimates. The Heritage calculation used a 50-year horizon for the estimated remaining life span of the typical unauthorized immigrant already living as an adult in the U.S.

"A number of people in Congress do not want to consider the cost," said Jim DeMint, the Heritage president and a former Republican senator from South Carolina. "They play their normal tricks of trying to push some of the expenses outside the 10-year window."

Under the proposed Senate plan, most unauthorized immigrants wouldn't be eligible for government benefits for at least a decade. During that time, their tax payments would total more than any benefits they receive, according to the Heritage report. It estimated the brunt of the bill's cost would come once they became eligible for programs such as welfare and food stamps, and eventually for Social Security and Medicare. The Heritage study also assessed the cost of immigrants using parks, roads and courts and the cost of educating their children.

On average, a household of currently unauthorized immigrants would receive $592,000 more in government benefits than it paid in taxes over the course of a lifetime, the report estimated. Mr. Rector's conclusions are based on the assessment that a large share of immigrant households are headed by people with low levels of education, who have lower incomes and are likely to use government-benefits programs.

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com.